This Concealer Hack Will Save Your Thin Eyebrows

My brows—or rather, lack thereof—are the bane of my existence. In fact, when I don’t pencil (or powder or gel) them, I look like I have no brows whatsoever. None. I usually refer to my naked, pre-brow product face as “a well-groomed Gollum.” And so every morning, I brush, powder, trace, brush again, sculpting and shaping something out of nothing with my trusty army of brow products (currently on rotation: Julep’s soon-to-be released new Brow Powder, Stila’s Stay All Day Brow Gel ($34), and an amazing brow pencil I picked up at a Japanese dollar store). But even when I do fill my them in, I find that my natural brows are so incredibly sparse that there isn’t enough hair for the powder (or gel) to catch onto, and I’m left with little gaps along my brow line. I know, I know—the struggle is real.

Then, one day I happened to step inside the Violet Grey beauty boutique on Melrose Avenue to meet with makeup legend Bobbi Brown. One of the makeup artists on her staff was doing touch-ups, so I gave her free reign of my face. This usually ends in two emotions: horror, or elation. This time, it happened to be the latter, but not just because the makeup was on point (I even ended up buying the lipstick she used on me—which, as any beauty editor will tell you, rarely happens). No, this time I left the makeup appointment feeling elated because I had procured a bombshell of a brow tip that I will carry with me to the end of my days.

“You can pat some concealer in any spots where your brow powder isn’t catching,” the makeup artist said casually, as she filled in my brows. “Then, go over that spot with brow powder again, and it’ll immediately fill in the gaps.” She proceeded to hold up the mirror and do just that, and I watched in shock as my thin, pathetic brows were powdered, then concealed, then powdered again until they were thick, fat and full. I was aghast and thrilled at the same. Aghast, because I couldn’t believe concealer was the secret to getting the full brows of my dreams all along, and thrilled because I knew the Delevingne-level brows of my dreams were now a real possibility.